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Boris Skosyrev – king of Andorra

Boris Skosyrev – king of Andorra

Boris Skosyrev was an adventurer, a Russian emigre. In 1934 he became the king of Andorra. His life was more like an adventure novel than a reality.
Boris Mikhailovich Skosyrev was born on June 12, 1896 in Vilnius, the Russian Empire. He was born into the family of Mikhail Skosyrev and his wife Elizaveta Dmitrievna.
In 1917 his father was a chief of the 7th district of Vilna province. It is known that during the World War I Skosyrev was attached to the British Armored Division. Then he was in the UK and, according to him, performed a series of secret orders of the British Government.
By 1923 Skosyrev had Dutch citizenship.
In 1930 in Catalonia and Andorra Skosyrev called himself Count of Orange (fr. Comte d’Orange), that was fiction.
In 1932 he was expelled from the Balearic Islands (Spain).
In 1933 he visited Andorra for the first time. In June 1934 Skosyrev expelled from Andorra. A month later, he illegally returned there and … became the King of Andorra. He wrote the country’s constitution which was short, only 17 paragraphs. It had to protect the rights of indigenous population. However, the Bishop of Urgel didn’t like the idea of Andorra’s transformation into the gaming zone. As a result, Skosyrev decided to declare war. Skosyrev was arrested by five Spanish civil guards.
On October 31, 1934 Spanish court sentenced him to one year in prison. Soon he was released and sent to Portugal. After spending several months in Portugal, Skosyrev went to France at the end of 1935, where he lived with his wife.

Boris Skosyrev – king of Andorra

On October 7, 1939 Skosyrev was arrested by the French authorities and sent to the camp at Le Vernet.
In 1958, Dr. Francisco Fernando Lopez, Portuguese friend of Skosyrev, received letters from him and his wife. They were sent from the German town of Boppard. According to Skosyrev, in October 1942 he was released from the camp by the Germans and sent to the Soviet Union. At the end of the war, he fell into the hands of Soviet troops, was sent the Gulag (where he stayed until 1956), and then he was able to return to Germany, where he lived in the town of Boppard.
Boris Skosyrev died on February 27, 1989 in Boppard, Germany.